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Friday, January 31, 2014

I started the week by doing my own random act of kindness. If you have ever used the bathroom at school you know the toilet paper is pretty much a step up from sand paper. So I made this little basket of Charmin for the teacher bathroom!

We had a day where we were delayed and then we missed another day due to extreme cold. It was 7 degrees outside and we are in Alabama! That's way too cold for this southern teacher!

So when we came back to school we had a little fun. The kids created football players that represent the team they think will win the Super Bowl.

Then I had the kids write which team they think will win and which habit the football players use. These turned out really cute!

We have been learning about dividing fractions this week. So we made this flip book in our interactive notebook. You can lift the flaps where the words are and see more detailed instructions.

My students have also been watching the Kid President videos. They love them and he is always talking about how to make the world more awesome. So the students wrote about how they can make the world more awesome.

STUDENTS: Why do you like Kid President? What can you do to make our school more awesome?

Friday, January 24, 2014

I've had a few emails about my photos not loading correctly on my blog so I'm trying something a little different this week. Thanks to those of you who let me know. I'll also be working on getting a new design to help solve the problem. If you have suggestions of where I can find some cute blog designs I'd love to hear from you. I really want red, black, and white with polka dots to match my classroom. I truly appreciate the fact that I have followers and I'm excited that I can share things that other teachers want to use in their classrooms.

This week we started Pasta for Pennies. We are raising money for leukemia and cancer research. We had a visitor come to the school and talk to everyone about cancer. He had volunteers wearing red caps (red blood cells), white caps (white blood cells), and purple caps (cancer cells) to demonstrate cancer and chemo.The students who represented chemotherapy were dressed similar to Power Rangers.

The white and red blood cells were just hanging out until the cancer cells came in and pushed them all together. Once the chemo was injected they came in and "killed" the cancer cells. It was a really neat demonstration and presented in a way that all the students could understand.

We also learned how the colonists felt when they were taxed after the French and Indian War.

We used Skittles for money and each student had 18 of them. King (or Queen in our case) George and Parliament decided what to tax. Then the tax collector went around the room collecting taxes. Our tax collector was not a very popular person after she had to collect taxes on jewelry, glasses, pants, and other items. This helped the students understand how the colonists felt about being taxed.

Friday was the 100th day of school so we had a little fun! Some of the students dressed like they were 100 years old.

We wrote a Bucket List of things to do before turning 100.

I displayed these in the hallway along with pictures we made. I found an app called Aging Booth. I took pictures of the kids and it ages them! Needless to say, this was a huge hit. No one liked their picture but we all looked old. Check out a few of them.

I even had them do one for me (I didn't like mine either).

As you probably know, we had been doing random acts of kindness for a few months. My students have really embraced this and done nice things for people. Several left thank you notes for their mailman and others have been leaving notes for each other. I even had several special notes left for me this week. They really made my day!

STUDENTS: Did you show a random act of kindness this week? Share what you did and why. Why is it important to do good things for others?

Later in the week, after we had learned more about MLK, I had them go back and write a few sentences about how he used the habits. I forgot to take pictures of the final product before I left school today so I don't have any to share. Maybe some of my students will share their sentences in the comments (for a bonus ticket).

One of my students, Emily H., created this short video for me. This tells how we used the lattice method to add and subtract fractions with unlike denominators. Great job Emily!

Finally, I have to share the video I showed my students this week. Are you familiar with Kid President. This little boy is so energetic and positive. I loved seeing my students' reaction to this one. They all laughed along with him and we had a great talk about how we are all teachers.

STUDENTS: After watching the above video we talked about how we are all teachers. Explain one way you are a teacher.

Saturday, January 11, 2014

This week we were working on adding and subtracting fractions with unlike denominators. Check out a few of the pages in our interactive notebook.

Thursday we used our new number line to review ordering fractions. I don't have anything magnetic in my classroom so we moved to the hallway on the lockers. I added a 0 and 1 on each end of the number line.

I gave each student a card of their own to add to the number line. They each had to add the card and then explain why they put it in that place. Then other students could either agree with the placement or share an argument to move the card.

I didn't correct the mistakes because the students did it as we went. I also told them I would leave the number line up in the hallway for them to look at and see if there were other cards they wanted to move.

Once we returned to the classroom I had the groups discuss which mathematical practices this activity covered. They all came to the conclusion that it covered all the ones in our flipbook so far.

I also traded desks for tables this week and I'm pretty happy with the results so far.

The tables make it much easier for group work and collaboration. We are working out the kinks but I think this is going to work for us!

STUDENTS: What is your math goal for this 9 weeks? What do you plan to do in order to reach your goal?

Friday, January 3, 2014

We are back from Christmas break! I don't know that I can call this a week because the students were only in school one day. Since I didn't really take pictures I thought I'd share something my best friend Kelly Reasner and I did in the teacher workroom today.

We have been doing random acts of kindness with our students so we thought we'd share it with the faculty as well. So we made a RAK board in the workroom. The border was already up but we decided this is something that is going to have to be changed. But I didn't want to wait to share what we did.

On the left side of the board we posted 5 random acts of kindness teachers can do for themselves or for others. We plan to switch them out each week so we added paper clips so they can be easily changed.

Then on the right side we added some posters about random acts of kindness.

So my favorite RAK for next week is to share a music list. I have been accused of listening to music that is a little darker than what most of my co-workers listen to. So I came home tonight and typed up my list so I'm ready to post it Monday. Want to see my list?